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WONDERS OF NATURE
Sargasso Sea. Nature miracle
Near Bermuda, where the warm streams of the Gulf Stream rush like a mighty river from the Florida Strait to the shores of Europe, another stream branches off from the main channel of this "river in the ocean", going east to the Azores archipelago. Having reached its inhospitable volcanic shores, it then turns south towards the Canary Islands. And to the south in the Atlantic, approximately between the Cape Verde Islands and the Lesser Antilles, the North Trade Wind current is directed from east to west, closing this giant cycle of oceanic waters. Inside this cycle there remains a huge area of almost stagnant, but clean and warm water. Here, swaying on the gentle waves of the oceanic swell, Sargassum algae live in the surface zone of the waters, whose long leaves are kept afloat by numerous air bubbles. Either small clusters, or entire islands, or long ribbons of floating algae, together with the creatures living on them, form a peculiar, unlike anything, isolated world, called the Sargasso Sea.
The Antilles serve as its western border, and to the north this sea extends to the Bermuda archipelago. At the same time, from the south, its border runs approximately along the Tropic of Cancer, and in the east it almost reaches the Azores. This mysterious region of stagnant waters in the middle of the Atlantic has long been the subject of stories that strike terror into the hearts of sailors. It was believed that ships could get stuck in a continuous porridge of algae and the crews of sailboats deprived of their course were doomed to death from heat and thirst when fresh water supplies ran out. The imagination of the science fiction writer placed here a whole island of such captive ships of the Sargasso Sea and the remains of lost ships. In fact, Sargassum certainly never hampers the movement of ships or drifting shipwrecks. All this is nothing more than a legend. But sometimes it happens that the ribbons of the Sargasso completely cover the surface of the ocean to the very horizon, giving it the appearance of a flooded bottomless meadow. It was this picture that greatly frightened the companions of Columbus at one time, who decided that they could not escape from this terrible trap. But, as we know, the voyage of the great Genoese ended quite well. We add that such an accumulation of algae is not a permanent phenomenon. At other times in the same area, you may not find a single bunch of Sargasso. On closer examination, clods of Sargassum algae, most often the size of a human head, turn out to be a plexus of narrow ribbons and threads of yellow and greenish-yellow colors at the ends and brown at the base. The diameter of these clusters ranges from a few centimeters to several decimetres. They include three types of algae from the genus Sargassum. Usually on the surface of the "sea without shores" there are one or two accumulations per hundred square meters. In bunches of algae live bryozoans, barnacles, worms, crabs, shrimps, often taking on a brown-yellow color to match the color of algae. On the leaves you can also see dense balls of flying fish caviar glued to them. But the most interesting and unusual creature whose life path begins and ends in the Sargasso Sea is the European eel. The origin of these fish has long been a mystery. Even in ancient times, people wondered: how do eels reproduce? No one has ever found caviar or milk in them. There is a semi-anecdotal story about how the great scientist Aristotle, in retaliation for the fact that he was surrounded at the feast of Alexander the Great with the most delicious dish - smoked eel, hypothesized at the table that these delicious fish originated from worms crawling out of manure. The mocking philosopher, presumably, thoroughly spoiled the appetite of his companions, but he did not know the real answer to the riddle either. In his writings it was stated: "Eels have no sex, no caviar and milk, since they are born from the bowels of the sea." Unraveling the mystery of eels had to wait two thousand years. Only in the XNUMXth century did ichthyologists come across strange, similar either to blades of grass or worms, transparent creatures in the Atlantic, which received the scientific name of leptocephals. After many years of research, it was found that this is not an independent species of fish, but eel larvae, into which they turn after some time. But only at the beginning of the XNUMXth century it was proved that the Sargasso Sea is the birthplace of leptocephals. Eels, living for years in the rivers and lakes of Europe, do not show a tendency to breed for a long time. Only after 7-10 years, when their size reaches half a meter, these fish begin to prepare for the most important moment of their lives. Their skin becomes silver-black, their eyes enlarge. Moving mainly at night, eels begin to descend along the rivers to the sea. The instinct of procreation powerfully drives them downstream. If the fish do not find a way out of the lake or stream, then at dawn they crawl out onto land and, wriggling like snakes, crawl through the dewy grass in search of a river that will lead them to salt water. However, they can stay in the air for up to three days! Having reached the sea, European eels swim across the entire Atlantic Ocean, for five and a half thousand kilometers, into the Sargasso Sea. Having reached there, they descend to a depth of a kilometer or more, and here they spawn, and then die. From the eggs laid by the females, tiny larvae hatch - the same leptocephals. They rise to the upper layers of the ocean and, picked up by the Gulf Stream, swim to the northeast. For two and a half years they move with the course to the shores of Europe. On the way, leptocephali grow, and they get into the rivers of Portugal, France, Ireland and the Baltic countries already similar to adult eels, only transparent. Only after a few months of life in fresh water, they finally turn into the fish we are used to. Then the whole life cycle of acne is repeated from the beginning. I must say that, although the answer to the main question: where do eels come from, has been obtained by science, nevertheless, many other mysteries remain. It is not clear how these mysterious fish navigate in their long transoceanic voyage. Why did they have to go so far? After all, it would be possible to spawn off the coast of Europe. And how do eel larvae find their way to their native river, where they have never been before? Finally, why do only female eels live in rivers and lakes, while males do not rise above river mouths? That's how many unsolved secrets are associated with an amazing creature born in the depths of the boundless (in the truest sense of the word) Sargasso Sea - this unique region of the World Ocean. And sailors and pilots around the world are haunted by a mysterious fragment of this sea, limited by lines connecting the Bermuda archipelago, the island of Puerto Rico and the southern cape of the Florida peninsula. Look at the map: this is just the eastern part of the Sargasso Sea! The infamous "Bermuda Triangle" has claimed more than one hundred human lives. For four centuries now, under mysterious circumstances, caravels and galleons, motor schooners and large steamships, and even warships have disappeared here without a trace. Airplanes disappeared here more than once, and with modern ships, and with air liners, radio communications were suddenly interrupted at first. There was a case when, already in the XNUMXth century, a flight of US Air Force aircraft flying over the Bermuda Triangle suddenly disappeared from the radar screens and stopped radio communications. Searches for all three aircraft were unsuccessful. Mysterious disappearances in the sinister triangle continue to occur today. Some people try to explain them by the difficult conditions of navigation in this region of the ocean: frequent fogs, reefs off the coast of Bermuda, and sudden hurricanes. But all these reasons, firstly, do not answer the question why not a single piece of debris, a life buoy, an overturned boat, or, at worst, even a barrel, is found from the missing ships. Secondly, it is impossible in any logical way to explain the termination of radio communications with aircraft and ships, as well as failures in the operation of radars. And if the secrets of eels are sooner or later unraveled by zoologists, then the mystery of the "Bermuda Triangle" is likely to excite more than one generation of people. And many more scientific hypotheses and newspaper sensations will give rise to this mysterious corner of the Sargasso Sea. Author: B.Wagner
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